The famous
military analyst Clauswitz once wrote that war is politics continued by other
means. Consequently, political suicide may be considered voting by other
means.

Political suicide is not
new. During the Buddhist crisis in South Vietnam in the spring of 1963, a
monk immolated himself in downtown Saigon in protest against the government's
favoritism of Catholicism.

Malcolm Browne, an
Associated Press photographer on assignment in Vietnam, was forewarned of the
suicide. He caught it on film and the horrifying image appeared on the
front pages of newspapers around the world.

Attempts were made to
downplay the significance of the suicide. Browne was accused of disloyalty
by allowing himself to be used in a propaganda ploy. Madame Nhu, the
official hostess of the South Vietnamese government, sister-in-law of the
bachelor president Ngo Dinh Diem, and wife of the head of the secret police,
called the burning a "barbeque" and offered to light the match for the
next one.

After the New York
Times criticized Madame Nhu in an editorial as being callous, Madame Nhu
replied in a letter, "When unworthy people dare to make a farce of
religion, should those respecting religion play the game of the sacrilegious or
should they denounce them for what they are? If one has no courage to
denounce, if one bows to madness and stupidity, how can one ever hope to cope
with the other wrongs of humanity exploited in the same fashion by Communists?

"I may shock some
by saying 'I would beat such provocateurs ten times more if they wore monks
robes,' and 'I would clap hands at seeing another monk barbeque show, for one
can not be responsible for the madness of others."

This was from the wife
of one of the highest government officials talking about one of her
countrymen. In fact, the vast majority of South Vietnamese were
Buddhists. In 1963, the Buddhists were labeled "communists" in
order to negate the meaning of their sacrifice. Today, suicide bombers are
called terrorists, not communists.

In August a second
Buddhist monk burned himself to death in Saigon on the day before Jacqueline
Kennedy delivered a baby prematurely. These suicides prompted President
Kennedy, whose newborn son, Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, died after two days (even
Presidents could not save 7 month premature babies in 1963) to set in motion the
wheels that resulted in the overthrow and murder of South Vietnam's President
Diem and his brother Nhu. It would take 12 years, over 50,000 American
dead, millions of dead Vietnamese and billions of wasted dollars before the
United States reached the same conclusion as the Buddhist monks who killed
themselves in 1963.

Norman R. Morrison

The Vietnamese were not
the only people killing themselves in desperation over the situation. On
November 3, 1965, a 31 year old Quaker named Norman R. Morrison burned himself
to death outside the Pentagon, 100 feet from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's
office.

Mr. Morrison, the
executive secretary of the Stony Run Meeting, had been grieving for months about
the United States involvement in the Vietnam war. Mr. Morrison was married
and the father of three children: Ben, 6 years old; Tina, 5; and Emily, 1; who
was with her father when he ignited himself, but she escaped unharmed.

Mrs. Morrison had heard
her husband express his distress over a Catholic priest's account of a bombing
in a North Vietnam village, the Quakers disclosed. However, they said Mrs.
Morrison had told friends she had no idea that her husband was considering
self-immolation.

The priest's story was
reprinted from a Paris newspaper, according to close friends of the
family. They said Mr. Morrison had frequently read and heard first-hand
accounts of suffering in Vietnam, and was deeply moved.

Mr. Morrison was born
on Dec. 29, 1933, in Erie, Pa. He was graduated from the Chautauqua High
School, in Chautauqua, N.Y., in 1952.

For the next four
years, he attended the College of Wooster, in Ohio, majoring in religion.
Upon graduation, he received a bachelor's degree and a high school teaching
certificate in history and social studies.

He attended the Western
Theological Seminary, now the Pittsburgh Presbyterian Seminary, for one year in
1956. The next year, he attended the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

After five months of
travel in Europe and the Middle East, he returned in 1958 to the Pittsburgh
Seminary, and in 1959 received a bachelor of divinity degree. That year he
became a Quaker. He joined a Friends Meeting in Pittsburgh and soon after
moved to Charlotte, N.C. to help organize a Friends Meeting.

There he also taught
the Old and New Testaments in the East Mecklenburgh High School in 1961 and
1962.

He and his family moved
to Baltimore in 1962 to take up his work as executive secretary of the Stony Run
Meeting. Mr. Morrison wrote:

"The Church of the
Spirit is always being built. It possesses no other kind of power and
authority than the power and authority of personal lives, formed into a
community by the vitality of the divine human encounter.

"Quakers seek to
begin with life, not with theory or report. The life is mightier than the
book that reports it. The most important thing in the world is that our
faith becomes living experience and deed of life."

Maurice Ploscowe

Maurice Ploscowe, the son of
a judge, was the Republican candidate for United States Congress from the 20th
district on the West Side of Manhattan in 1976.

The district, running
the length of the island from the Inwood in the North to West 26th Street in the
south, included the offices of the New York Times, ABC News and CBS News.

Ten days before the
election in November, Maurice Ploscowe killed himself by jumping from the
terrace of his Central Park West apartment. The front page story of his
death in the New York Times was the first mention of his name in the
paper that year.

In other words, Maurice
Ploscowe, the Republican candidate for Congress, literally had to kill himself
to get covered in the New York Times. The motto of that paper is
"All The News That's Fit To Print." It ought to be "All The
News That Fits, We Print." And the Times has the audacity to call
itself the newspaper of record for the nation.

In essence, the New
York Times imposed a one-party state on the 20th District in
Manhattan. And Ploscowe's name will not now be found in the 1976 election
returns for Congress. After he died, the Republican County Committee of
New York County appointed a replacement candidate to fill the vacancy caused by
his death.

The September 11 Attackers and
Palestinian Suicide Bombers

The Buddhist monks in
Vietnam, Norman R. Morrison and Maurice Ploscowe had education and relative
wealth in common. In those more genteel times in the 1960's and 1970's, the
suicides killed only themselves.

It is also an
inescapable conclusion that their suicides were a waste, inasmuch as the
Buddhist monks and Morrison failed to prevent the bloodbath and became the
Vietnam War, and Ploscowe's death certainly has not made American elections any
fairer or press coverage any more even handed.

Clearly, they all felt
despondent about the drift of affairs, and time has proven them right.

The suicide bombers of
the September 11 attacks and the few biographies of the Palestinian bombers that
I have had an opportunity to read points in the same direction. Political
suicides are generally well educated people of some means.

History clearly shows
that the political suicides of the past were merely making moral statements
which had virtually no impact on the issues they gave their lives to protest.

The ringleaders
of September 11 attacks come from the same mold. Well educated often
wealthy and intensely religious, the one difference is they decided to use their
suicides as a catalyst to kill other people. The interesting thing is that
of the 24 hijackers, logistics men and helpers: 15 are Saudis, 2 are from the
United Arab Emirates, 1 Egyptian, 1 Lebanese, 2 Moroccans, 1 Yemeni, 1 Algerian,
and 1 resident of London..

Suicide is a desperate
act. Political suicide is a sign of a desperate political situation.
The people who kill themselves are generally powerless, trying to send a message
to the more powerful.

The message of
September 11 is that it is time to finally defuse the situation in the Middle
East. The recent vote of the Likud Party not to support a Palestinian
state ever on the West Bank of the Jordan is a clear sign that a significant
minority of the Israeli people has been sabotaging all attempts to make an
accommodation with the Palestinians.

In 1948, when the
United Nations supported the creation of Israel, it also called for the creation
of an Arab state. From the murder of Count Bernadotte to the assassination
of Itsak Rabin, there have been Israeli gunmen willing to kill anyone who wanted
to make peace with the Palestinians who lived in the land of Israel before the
mass arrival of the Jews from Europe and the United States after the end of
World War II.

The time has come to
think the unthinkable and say the obvious, that it is Israel and not the
Palestinians who are standing in the way of a peaceful solution to the Middle
East problem.

Retaliation has a
specific meaning in international law, a meaning that the Israelis have never
recognized. For the past 50 years, Israel has followed the philosophy of killing
10 Arabs for every dead Israeli. Seeing as Israel is the military
superpower in the region, it has been able to defeat the Arabs in every war, to
assassinate people at will, and to destroy other countries and massacre innocent
people, all with American arms (since 1967, it was French arms before that) and
financed with western money.

The Israeli policy has
been to terrorize the Arabs and threaten them with extinction unless they agree
to accept second class status in the land that was once theirs. Not
surprisingly, they do not want to accept Israel's generous offer.

Finally, the Arabs have
found a way to retaliate, to kill 10 or 20 Israelis for every one of theirs,
suicide bombers. It is time for the rest of the world to straighten up and
listen.

Anyone who does not
agree with this analysis should read ARAFAT a Political Biography by Alan
Hart. It was written in 1984, but it is just as valid today as it was when
it was written almost 20 years ago. Ariel Sharon's policies have not
changed one iota in the past 20 years.

And for those of you
who have neither the time nor the inclination to read Hart's biography of
Arafat, ask yourselves this question, why are the book stores filled with books
about the Israeli political leaders, with whole sections devoted to the
Palestinian "problem", but there is not a single biography of Arafat
who has been a major world figure for over 30 years.